


Magic Trick

by Random_ag



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Anger, Bitterness, Guns, Not Having A Good Time, Party, Pre-Canon, Vomiting, he does Not Shoot, long story short investors are assholes and joey is fucking tired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:06:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24649960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag
Summary: It is the end of a horrible, horrible party.And Joey is so fucking tired.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12





	Magic Trick

Joey was leaning against a wall, smiling vacantly and hating every passing second.

Parties like the one he was attending had lost their attractive long ago, more precisely after the first three, the ones where he was still convinced talking about cartoons and passions and possibilities and techniques would have interested anybody among the investors aside from himself. For someone who thought of themselves as an extrovert like he did, this should have been the perfect opportunity to recharge, relax, be in his own element; instead, he’d done his absolute best to avoid any kind of contact by attempting to get incapsulated by a piece of the wall.

He’d watched them eat anything that could fit in their hands with an almost indecent enjoyment, while he had barely managed to nibble on something - he didn’t know what it had been, just that it had gone and stuck itself in his esophagus, bobbing up and down with every breath.

It felt disgusting.

His last interaction had not bettered the evening in the slightest.

He liked women.

They were clever and pretty and bright and knew how to get shit done.

He would have never entered a relationship with one, for reasons he’d rather not specify, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate them.

But, first of all, he did not know her.

Second, he was not a man to be flirted with.

And third.

Third, for the love of God.

“Life of the party, aren’t you?” a voice that reeked of tobacco and expensive cologne slapped on his shoulder with a meaty hand.

Joey knew him - an investor, of course. He would read their names and they would swim right through his head lazily, like otters trasported by currents. He remembered him because he always wore the same clothes when out to eat, always used the same perfume, and always smoked one of those damned cigars the width of a thumb and with the smell of putrescent fish.

He swallowed to keep the food from resurfacing.

“I can’t believe you scared that lovely dame away!” the man continued, pushing him from his safe invisible spot into the maws of a table of faceless, far too lucky bastards, “She already had an expensive hotel room ready for a night with you, didn’t she tell you?”

Ah. Of course.

“You paid her to ask me out?” Joey asked. His mouth felt strained as it kept itself locked in his relaxed smile.

A laugh: “Is that what you asked her to make go away?”

Piece of shit.

“You were just standing there, and I thought…”

He thought it would have been fun to look from the sidelines as a tooth gapped freak got his hopes up.

“I’m afraid I’m not into reproduction.”

“And who said she should have gotten pregnant?”

“I meant the act in general.”

A puff of nauseous smoke made him fear his gagging was enough loud to be heard.

“You ought to be the most frigid, prudish man I’ve ever seen draw devils.”

He felt the need to strangle him.

But that big, sweaty, reeking hand was still clasped on his shoulders, even now that he was sitting down.

“Say, the evening’s getting a little boring, entertainer.”

Of course.

Of course.

God, how he wanted to spit in their faces.

Ah! Wishful thinking. At most, he could ruin their appetites.

Abandoning himself on the back of his chair, Joey put his tongue beneath the gap in his teeth and whistled, no, chirped; and he was so convincing that more than a few guests looked up to the ceiling as they shielded their heads, convinced a bird has found its way inside the room.

“Friends!” he spoke, opening his arms wide; and he said something made up about thanking them for coming, and the good company they’d made for the evening, and another thing that caused them all to cheer and raise their glasses to him. He announced once they’d quieted down that he had one last surprise for them: a magic trick right before the delightful dessert.

A man at his table laughed, gracelessly loud and inforgivingly reeking of grease: “From _you?_ Why you’re the worst magician I’ve ever had the displeasure of seeing!”

A round of shrill cocky chuckles filled the room.

Joey smiled at him, eyes half lidden, so very goddamn _fucking_ tired.

“Don’t worry,” he reassured the comedian of the evening, as funny as a lobster pinching one’s nose, “This will be the simplest trick you’ve ever heard of. Only a dunce could mess it up.”

“A dunce like you?”

He smiled a little wider: “We’ll see.” and he was careful to keep the bile tucked away safely in larynx, for it was not the right moment yet.

He turned to the rest of the guests: “I only need two things for my little show of prestidigitation: one I should have, unless I lost it… Has anyone seen my head?”

Unnerving giggling was all around him. A not particularly funny but not necessarily mocking young woman - too much rose stuck to her wrist, its sweet scent rendered painfully close to a miasma by its overabundance - detached from her date’s side to lean towards him, helpfully extending her index finger towards where his cranium was situated on top of his shoulders. He made a motion to check if she was right; another cacophony of cackles arose. He felt his head under his fingertips: his stubble, his dark hair, his forehead and jaw. It felt disgusting, nauseating, throbbing and seething and puke-worthy.

He thanked the young lady by kissing the back of her hand. She giggled kindly.

“And what else do you need?” somebody shouted, laughing stupidly right after the words had left their mouth.

“A gun.”

Some were taken aback. But the one who had laughed at their own non-existing joke gave another guffaw (it reminded him of an adolescent idiot who thinks they know everything just because they bought something in secret in a rundown alley) and took out a pistol. They made their way up to his table to deliver it in person, sliding it over the dishcloth so it could reach him.

“And now what?” they chortled.

Joey took off the safe like he’d seen officers do before, stuck the muzzle to temple with his finger curled on the trigger, and stared straight into their eyes with a smile.

“Now I shoot myself and die.”

And just like that.

Everybody went still.

Sweet, sweet silence.

Saccharine, fearful silence.

Somebody could have incited him.

Come on. What’s taking so long.

But nobody did.

Because they were all afraid.

Ruin their appetites.

The most he could do.

Fear would close their stomaches, alright.

Ruin their appetites.

Succesfully done.

He wondered, for a second.

If he did shoot.

What would happen?

To them, mostly.

Would they panic?

Would they yell?

Call the cops?

Run away.

Yes.

That seemed right.

Running away.

As far as possible.

As fast as possible.

Screaming wildly.

Nobody wants to be affiliated with a corpse, now do they?

Run away.

Puke.

Cry.

Scream.

Yell.

Shout.

_**BANG!** _

Someone gave a shout, bringing their hands to their mouth, every person in the room forgetting how a shot should have rung through their ears as they recoiled, rose to their feet, widened their eyes fearfully.

Joey’s grey irises remained still. He turned to the self-made comedian, muzzle still to his head.

“Did it work?” he asked, grinning.

The man wanted to laugh, he could see it in his face. He wanted to laugh so hard. He wanted to show he hadn’t been terrified, he hadn’t had his heart jump in his throat and organs painfully compress inside his abdomen. He wanted to throw his head back and laugh really, really, really loud. He wanted to make the air lighter. He wanted to yell at the top of his lungs ‘you cowardly son of a bitch, you almost had us for a second or two’ to show that he hadn’t been afraid, so that everybody would have laughed along to show nobody had been afraid.

But he only swallowed, searching for words that didn’t come. And so he merely meekly shook his head with a barely perceptible movement.

“Then I guess I am that big a dunce.”

Joey flung the gun over the other end of the table without bothering to secure it, its owner fumbling to get it before it fell to the floor. He stood up with his largest toothiest smile seeping so much hateful bile through the gap between his molars that he could feel it dribbling on his chin like green mucus wrath. He curtsied briefly, cheerifully, like a perfect cartoon character: “Goodnight, everyone.” he bid them, and deaf to any sound that might have followed him he walked away.

He waited until out in the streets, on the way home. (He didn’t want the staff to think it was their fault instead of the guests’.) He finally let the lump in his throat get the best of him and vomited on the sidewalk what little he had eaten hat night, salivating and spitting to cleanse his mouth of the foul acidic taste.

He staggered away in a haze, tired, hateful, stressed, empty.

Ruined their appetites.

At least, he’d ruined their appetites.

He spat again, joylessly reveling at the memory.

His mind flew back to the gun, to his thoughts. He shook his shoulders uncomfortably, but the feeling clung to him with nails like claws.

He just wanted to sleep.


End file.
